


Can I Call You Tonight?

by exceptionallyemma



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Clay | Dream-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Falling In Love, Family Secrets, Flirting, GeorgeNotFound-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, Internal Conflict, M/M, Mentioned Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Phone Calls & Telephones, Romance, Sad Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Slow Burn, Touch-Starved GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), slow updates a girl is in college, they meet in person, they’re gay, when I say slow burn I mean PAINFULLY slow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:02:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exceptionallyemma/pseuds/exceptionallyemma
Summary: Amidst rainy Florida nights, Dream and George swap secrets over phone calls. With every piece of Dream that George unlocks, something vulnerable and important begins to wake.In lieu of updates to tbhyourelame's incredible DreamNotFound / "gream" fanfic — Heat Waves — I decided to try my own spin at a song-inspired Dream/Clay x Georgenotfound fanfiction. This one is based on Dayglow's song "Can I Call You Tonight?"Please forgive similarities to Heat Waves: the lyrics of "Can I Call You Tonight?" reference late night calls and a power outage (which are events in Heat Waves) but the latter will play a far greater part in this fic than in Heat Waves. Again, I'm really not trying to copy tbhyourelame and I think they are an incredible writer.Also, this is my first post to AO3 as well as my first time publishing my writing in a few years, please be nice :)P.S. I do not ship Dream and George in real life, this is purely a work of fiction.The writing will include mature content, including curse words and sexually charged language.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is my first time writing fic for AO3 <3 please leave a comment if you enjoy it, and drop any AO3 tips below!
> 
> this is an AU where basically everything regarding Dream + George is the exact same, except that COVID never happened in this universe (wishful thinking, right?). hope that makes sense :)
> 
> I also wrote a part of this pretty late at night: please feel free to inform me of any grammatical errors or any bits that don't make sense. thank you for reading!

Dream felt it, the exact moment that the power shut off. He let out a loud groan as the screen in front of him clicked off instantaneously, the room suddenly swallowed in complete darkness. In the minute that it took his eyes to adjust, he saw nothing; the suddenness of the darkness filled him with extreme panic, and the howling wind outside made him briefly question the integrity of his windows.

It always got like this during the rainy season in Florida, but it was Dream’s first time living alone during the hurricane season and the power going out was a lot less fun in a dark apartment that creaked loudly at every push of the wind. He wouldn’t list the dark among the fears that he consciously recognized, but the way that his heart was pounding in his ears at every sound from outside made him question that.

At least he had Patches. She’d fallen asleep in his lap an hour or so into his games and had remained there as the rain had started. He reached into his lap with one hand to scoop her up, his other hand moving to pull his headphones off of his head and place them next to him.

His eyes had adjusted enough in the darkness to make out the shape of his desk and the outline of his beloved cat, who, as far as he could tell, was still fast asleep. The confirmation of her existence noticeably relaxed him and he absentmindedly stroked his hand over her pillow soft fur.

The apartment was eerily quiet, with only the heavy rainfall outside to disrupt the otherwise perfect silence. Dream didn’t like it — he’d switched on his computer a few hours earlier to distract him from his thoughts, but here he was once again forced to confront them. Nevermind his thoughts, though, as he first had to address the threatening darkness.

Holding Patches gently against his thick sweatshirt, he stood up and reached across the desk to grab his phone, tapping it until the flashlight turned on. Dream made his way out of his bedroom and into the kitchen, where he opened a cabinet or two until he found a box with a couple of candles that he’d stashed there for this exact reason.

By this time, Patches had stirred awake, and she meowed in protest until Dream set her down (he didn’t mind; he could use another free hand, and he didn’t feel comfortable wielding a flame lighter with her thick fur in the other hand). She wandered over toward her food bowl, seemingly unbothered by the darkness. Needing his hands to hold the box of candles and the lighter, Dream turned the flashlight off and slipped his phone into his back pocket.

He walked a couple of steps from the kitchen into the living room, one uneasy hand outstretched to grasp onto the edge of his furniture to ensure that he didn’t stub his toe or hit his knee against something. He placed two candles along the half wall division between the kitchen and living room, and another one on the coffee table.

The candles made it a little easier to see, but mostly they acted to relieve Dream of some of his anxiety. Patches, who had meanwhile satisfied herself with her food bowl, was curled onto the couch; Dream carefully dropped next to her, his head tilting back into the soft cushions as he allowed himself to take a deep breath.

He absently rubbed her thumb along his cat’s small head and listened to the sound of the rain against his roof. He silently thanked the powers that be (the universe? God? Simple good luck? He wasn’t too sure, to be honest) for a sturdy roof and a place where he could safely ride out the storm.

It was then that he looked at his phone and read his notifications for the first time. He had a text from Sapnap, a few Discord notifications and two missed calls from George. They’d been on a Discord call, George, Sapnap and Dream, when his power had suddenly clicked off. The last set of notifications — _two_ calls from George — stirred something in Dream’s chest that made his heart squeeze, but he chalked it up to anxiety.

“did ur power go out too?” Sapnap had texted.

“Yep,” he typed back. “I just set up some candles.”

“U all good?” Dream added with little reflection, watching the text thread for a couple seconds before he received an affirmative text from his childhood best friend.

“all good over here. might want to check on gogy tho.” Dream smiled as he read the text, replying with a simple “Gotcha” before he opened his thread of calls. There sat the two missed calls from George, as well as a voicemail: it was only 13 seconds long. Dream pressed play and waited a moment as it loaded.

“Hi,” George’s voice filtered in through the speakers, noticeably touched with worry, “it’s just me. You and Sapnap just dropped out of the call at the same time. I know you said it was raining, though. Let me know that you’re alright when you get the chance. Okay, bye.”

Dream opened the thread of messages between himself and his British best friend. “Hey, the power went out over here for Sapnap and I. Not sure when it’ll be back tbh. Sorry about our game.” Within the minute, his screen lit up with George’s contact, and Dream slid to accept the call.

“Dream! Your power went out?” George’s British accent came out more when he was worried, Dream noted with affection. Their fans went crazy for the way that George’s accent shaped his words, and Dream secretly felt the same: George’s voice was satisfying in its smoothness, and Dream privately prided himself on the knowledge that he heard it more than a lot of other people. 

There was that pull in his chest again as he noted with appreciation the concern in George’s voice. “Hi George,” he answered, friendly but with a touch of sass for distance. “Yes, I believe that’s what my text said.”

Dream could nearly hear the eye roll in the sigh that George let out. “Alright, drama queen. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I am. I’m good. I lit a couple candles; checked in with Sapnap too, he’s good. I wasn’t expecting the power to go out, sorry, it really caught me off guard.”

“Does it do that a lot? When it rains there, I mean.” Dream listened as there was some shifting on George’s end.

“Um, yeah, I guess so,” Dream answered, his eyes flicking around the room as he relaxed further into his soft couch. “I dunno, I almost didn’t even notice it as much before.”

“Before?” George asked. There was more movement on his end; it sounded like he was settling into bed or something.

“Yeah, like, when I lived with my family, we would get together during a power outage and play a board game or something by the candle light.”

“That’s—” George started.

“Lame, old-timey, boring?” Dream finished for him.

George laughed. “I was gonna say ‘cute,’ actually, but okay.” Dream was surprised at George’s answer, mostly because he never really connected anything he did with the word ‘cute.’ He also got a little distracted just then because the word sounded really nice coming out of George’s mouth, his voice soft and his accent delicate on the ‘T.’

There it was once again: the thought. Dream had been battling it for weeks now. Actually, he reflected, it’d probably been longer than that. There was some line that he had crossed a long time ago, where friendly affection bled into… wherever he was now. Uncharted territory. 

He knew it because of the way that George’s voice affected him: it came in the form of a pull in his chest, like George was actually, physically tugging it toward him across the ocean. It didn’t hurt, not really, this ghost of a feeling. It just ached.

“Dream? Are you still there?”

“Hey, yeah, sorry, still here.” Dream’s hand found the edge of one of the couch cushions and he pinched it distractedly.

“Oh, you went quiet. I thought maybe you’d, like, cut off.”

“Jesus, George,” Dream laughed, interrupted by a rumble of thunder outside his window. His eyes flicked over to look out the glass as he continued, “You _are_ capable of surviving ten seconds without me, right?”

“Ouch!” George said defensively. “Of course I am. I can last hours without talking to you. You’re the one who’s, like, obsessed with me.”

It was Dream’s turn to get defensive. “Am not!” He protested, though the familiar twist had returned again. Obsessed was the wrong word, but there was something about his feelings for George that was distinct from how he felt toward other people: Sapnap or Karl, for example. He couldn’t explain it. He didn’t want to define it; was scared of what it meant.

“Okay, fine. Then I’ll just hang up,” George answered dismissively.

The words were out of Dream’s mouth before he could think about them. “No, wait!” There was silence on the other end of the line — he checked quickly that the call was still active, and he breathed a silent sigh of relief when he confirmed that it was. George was waiting for him to say something. “I, um, this sounds stupid.”

“What does?” George asked, his voice floated to Dream with more gentleness now.

“I just… It’s really dark here. And, like, really rainy. I haven’t done this alone before,” Dream managed out shyly. “A storm. I haven’t been alone for a storm before.” He waited for a criticism from George, but his friend’s voice kept its softness.

“Oh, that’s okay.”

“I’d just feel better if you didn’t leave. I… I just need you right now.” There was a beat of silence, but when George’s voice was back it had warmed noticeably. There was another crack of lightning, followed by thunder so strong that he felt it in his feet. He checked Patches alongside him, but she was still asleep. Jesus, that cat could sleep through anything.

“You _need_ me?” George repeated, teasing him. Fine, if he wanted to hear it again, Dream would give him the satisfaction. The thunder had spooked him and if George left him to the silence he was pretty sure he’d lose his mind.

“Yes,” Dream breathed.

“Okay, well, if you insist. What do you want to talk about?”

“Um, I’m not sure. Are you still playing the game?”

“Nah, I shut it off after you guys left. I’m just in bed now.”

“Okay, cool,” Dream said, trying (and failing) to fill the awkward silence. After a moment, they laughed in sync. “I’m so sorry, I have no idea what to say.” _I just want to hear your voice._ “What do normal people talk about?”

“Normal people?” George repeated in his British accent. “Um… girls, I guess?” Dream’s heart squeezed immediately as a sour feeling filled his stomach: _anything but that_ , he thought. George took his silence as an answer and laughed again. “Or not, okay.”

“Sorry,” Dream said again. “I don’t have any girls to talk about. I don’t—” he laughed, “I don’t really meet that many, I spend all my time talking with you and Sapnap and everyone else.”

“Please, stans everywhere are crying,” George groaned and Dream felt his cheeks redden. He fidgeted more with the edge of the cushion. “There are thousands of girls willing to, like, get run over by a truck for a speck of your attention.” It was true, the internet was pretty much overflowing with praise for Dream, and it took a conscious effort not to let it all go to his head.

It was nice, and he loved interacting with his fans, but, as he told George in that moment, “Come on, you know I’ve been pretty focused on my channel and stuff. You’re talking as though you talk to a lot of girls.”

“Um, I’m pretty sure I tweeted Pokimane the other day.” This made Dream laugh.

“Oh, alright then,” he answered sarcastically, trying to ignore the relaxing feeling that replaced his momentary jealousy-induced anxiety. There were times when he wondered if George had a whole secret life beyond his place on the internet and his chats with Dream: over in his own apartment in Florida, Dream could go a week without traveling beyond a mile of his house. He was pretty confident that George was the same way, and he relished the idea that a lot of his friend’s attention went toward their Minecraft adventures together.

He’d always been possessive over his friends — undeniably, a large part of him craved their validation — but George’s suddenly meant a lot to him. They’d stayed up on Discord on dozens of instances, disregarding their five hour time difference as the sun set or rose, just talking about anything and everything. Which was ironic, Dream thought to himself, given that they had nothing to talk about now.

He chalked it up to his anxiety: situations over which he had little control were guaranteed to throw him off his game, and his newfound fear of the rainy environment outside was making his heart beat at a volume that drowned out a lot of his other thoughts. Though, he was not as quick to dismiss the idea that George’s quiet, sleepy voice had nothing to do with his heart rate.

Another loud boom of thunder pulled him out of his thoughts and Dream involuntarily jumped. He didn’t realize that he’d released a half-surprised, half-frightened cry until George asked if he was okay. “What happened?”

The momentary fear was replaced with immense embarrassment. “I’m so sorry, I swear I’m good,” Dream assured him. “Fuck, dude, I’ve never had this problem. Like, I’ve never been afraid of the rain or anything like that before.”

George’s voice had adopted a soothing, low tone. “Clay,” he said pointedly, and Dream’s heart skipped a beat, “it’s okay. You don’t have to apologize. Honestly,” he continued between a small, pleasant laugh, “it’s kind of cute.” First, he’d used Dream’s real name, and now he had called him cute _again_? Jesus, it was like he was trying to make him flustered.

Fuck! Not flustered. What was he thinking? Obviously he did not have any kind of romantic feelings toward George. That would be weird and completely uncharacteristic of him. Truthfully, there were very few people who, over the course of his life, he would say he’d had a “crush” on, and no one in that group was even remotely similar to George.

Dream was thankful that George couldn’t see the blush that rose in his cheeks upon his friend’s words. Seriously, what was it about his accent that made everything sound so goddamn good? “Cute?” was all he trusted himself to answer as he tried to steady his voice.

He knew he’d failed when George laughed yet again. “Oh my god, you’re blushing.”

“Am not! You just — it caught me off guard, is all. What is up with you and that word tonight?”

“What word?” George asked, his laugh full and contagious. Dream found himself laughing along despite himself. Dream was nervous about the direction of the conversation, but he couldn’t deny the butterflies in his stomach that he fought to squash before answering.

“Jesus, just... Fuck. Change the subject.”

“No, no, too late for that. What, you’re not blushing ‘cause I called you cute, are you?” George asked mischievously. 

“I — What? No! No, I wasn’t blushing. I just,” he stopped to clear his throat, grasping for anything to say, “I don’t know, I don’t hear that word a lot. Like, in connection to me.”

George was incredulous. “You’re kidding. The internet pretty much doesn’t go a single day without calling you cute.” Dream groaned.

“You know what I mean. Those are words on a screen, and you’re, like…” he paused, unsure of himself.

“I’m, _like_ ,” George imitated him, his voice dangerously low as though he was daring Dream to continue, “what?”

“You’re, you know... George?” Dream offered lamely.

“What on Earth does that mean?” George answered with a small laugh, but his voice stayed at its titillating level. Dream briefly thought to himself about the things he’d do to bottle George’s voice up the way that it was right now — low and gentle, verging on flirtatious — and play it on repeat when he felt like it. There was no denying the smooth, amorous quality of George’s words at the moment.

The vision came before Dream had a chance to quash it — Dream, sitting at the edge of his bed with George standing in between his legs. George’s hand, delicate in its touch but firm in its grip, reaching to hold his chin. Dream’s eyes would flutter shut as he reached to grasp the bottom of George’s shirt, the other boy tilting Dream’s chin and pulling his lips upward, closer to his own.

His breath slowed and he exhaled quietly, feeling some of the energy leave his limbs as a new, heavier feeling settled in, centered on his stomach.

Dream had taken too long to answer; not that he’d have been able to manage a response, given that all of his energy at the moment was focused on trying to pull his consciousness away from his daydreams. “Dream?”

“George,” he answered, but he surprised himself with how low his voice had fallen, his daydream having affected him more than he’d anticipated. He hoped for a moment that George couldn’t recognize the longing in it. Outside, the thunder sounded again, but Dream didn’t jump again, suddenly ultra-focused on the quiet sound of George’s breathing on the other end of the call.

“Are you, like,” George began, the playful teasing replaced with a bit of breathlessness on his end.

Dream, emboldened by the change in George’s voice, decided to play George’s own card on him. His voice dripping in honey, he placed careful, heavy emphasis on each of his words as he replied, “Am I, _like_ , what?” A soft, victorious smile crawled onto his lips as George answered with a quiet, unintended “Fuck.”

They were quiet there for a moment and Dream tried to ignore the blood that rushed toward his waist. He wanted to focus, needed to solidify in his memory the harsh, uninhibited sound of George’s curse word intermingled with his low breaths. They hadn’t done this before — sure, they’d flirted playfully over Discord calls for weeks, which was what fed internet rumors in the first place — but this, their low voices in a dark room among the heavy raindrops, was entirely new.

But fuck, did it feel so good: some of the aching in Dream’s chest was relieved with each lust-soaked word, even as it created tension in his stomach.

“George,” he worked to keep his voice steady even as he infused it with enticing tones, slowing his words deliberately as he teased his friend through the phone. “Go on, then. Am I what?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream and George end the call; Dream contemplates his childhood and his previous relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to start off by saying thank you thank you thank you to the eleven INCREDIBLE human beings who gave me "kudos" on my the first chapter. it means the world that you guys enjoy my writing; I haven't shared my work in years because I'm super self-conscious about it and it was a massive ego boost and a big motivator to write more. I appreciate y'all so much, thank you.

“Go on, then. Am I what?”

Dream’s hand gripped the couch cushion as he desperately listened to George’s end: he knew he’d gone too far, but George was being far more receptive to his advances than he’d anticipated, and the minor changes in his voice were intoxicating.

He replayed in his mind George’s soft, “Fuck,” his accent rounded in all the right places, and he could swear he was seeing stars.

Suddenly there was the creak of a door on George’s end; there was shuffling, and when he spoke it was muffled, as though he had his hand over the speaker or it was pressed against his shirt. Dream heard a woman speaking, then a brief pause before George answered in a full voice, “Yeah, alright then. I’ll be right down.”

Dream’s cheeks flushed as the weight of his blatant flirting crushed him. There was definitely no denying that George’s tone had affected him, and he wanted to believe that George had been affected (turned on?) as well, not that he’d ever admit that.

“Hey,” George spoke into the phone, “I’ve got to go.”

“Oh,” Dream answered without thinking, his mortification basically suffocating as he sat limply on the couch.

“Yeah, I’m meant to go out to dinner with my parents tonight to celebrate.” If George’s voice held any embarrassment, Dream couldn’t identify it. The disappointment settled in him like lead, even as he tried to squash it. Dream cleared his throat, officially removing any of its previous raspiness and doing his best to act casual. 

“You’re celebrating?”

“Yeah,” George confirmed sheepishly, “YouTube finally got around to sending my 1 million subscriber plaque and my parents are over the moon about it. I _tried_ to tell them that I hit it a while back, but they want to, like, get together anyway.”

“Ah, okay. Well, thanks for,” he paused to clear his throat again, “helping me out. With the storm and stuff, I mean.”

“Sure, any time,” George answered simply, before adding in a concerned tone, “hey, you’ll be alright, yeah? With the storm. I’m really sorry that I have to go.”

Halfway across the world physically but with his mind much, much further, Dream squeezed his eyes shut tightly as he managed to answer, “Yeah, George. I’ll be good.” Truthfully, the storm was far down on his list of priorities, and he found himself almost grateful that the lack of power gave him an excuse to just be alone for a bit. “Enjoy your dinner.”

With that, they ended the call, Dream’s screen clicking off with an authoritative click as though to further cement his isolation. The room filled again with darkness and silence, and Dream dropped his phone at his side, Patches having disappeared to sleep elsewhere at some point during the call. Dream slapped his hands on his knees and let out a groan of frustration.

The tension in his waist had already greatly subsided, but what was left was a new confusing and complicated feeling in his chest. Dream dropped his head back into the couch and stared at the ceiling, his mind racing until it found its way back to George. Dream thought about George; his mouth breaking into a victorious smile, his face propped up on his hand, the way his neck muscles tightened when he threw it back in surprise and the sharpness of his jaw when he turned to look at something.

Dream imagined what George might have looked like during their call, relaxed in his chair, one hand leaning into his phone and the other fiddling with his sweatshirt, the way his head might have dipped forward as he unwittingly let out a breathy “Fuck.”

His hand clenched into a fist and he pressed it into the couch, his palm kneading the cold, leather material. He thought about the rain outside, imagined the rain soaking into the already water-soaked Florida earth, imagined himself wading through the flooded streets. Thought about George slipping on his hood, laughing as he half-jogged down the sidewalk and ducked his head to get into a car.

Dream caught himself before he dared to imagine himself there alongside him, or seated in the driver’s seat and watching as George climbed into the car, intently focused on his grin and the way the raindrops shone on his skin. He couldn’t dare to admit to himself that he wanted that, wanted to be near him, wanted to be able to reach out and brush his hand against George’s jaw or watch as his eyes half-closed at the sensation.

It was too dangerous to wonder what it would be like to hold the back of George’s neck or tug at his shirt until he slipped it off, and he certainly did not want to wonder what George’s arm muscles looked like flexed as he stretched them out above him, his head tilting back and his forehead creasing with satisfaction as Dream —

No. Fuck. Dream had far too active of an imagination, and when left alone it was a dangerous, dangerous thing. Dream had been alone for a while, he realized with a sinking feeling settling in his stomach. He opened his phone, disappointed to see that there were no new notifications, and then clicked it off again.

He stood up and moved toward the window and watched as the rain came down in sheets outside, observing the way that the trees bent easily in the wind. He could almost feel it through the glass as he found himself pressing a hand to the cold, smooth texture of the window. His eyes were filled with tears before he could figure out why.

Dream thought back to his childhood, the days spent doodling in class and the nights he pored over a computer. The lunch conversations he didn’t listen to, his mouth chewing and his head nodding but his brain occupied elsewhere. His head, always racing with thoughts; about the world and its mechanics, seasonal changes reflected in tree leaves and all the people in their houses at their own kitchen tables and sleeping in their own beds.

He used to think about families a lot, moms and dads that tucked children into bed and put their report cards on fridges, parents that whispered about money behind closed doors when they thought everyone was asleep and dads that yelled at moms even if everyone was asleep.

Now he thought about Alexa, her tear-stained face and the crack in her voice as she told him that…

Dream’s eyes closed and he tried to push away the memory, but it was there. “Clay,” she’d fought to say through her tears, “I’m scared.” He’d tried to reach out to her then, and she’d flinched — she’d jerked away from his touch like it was fire.

And he knew what he’d felt then. Knew that, when he should’ve been filled with guilt, or embarrassment, or maybe fear of his own, that he’d felt anger instead. That after she’d left him sitting there alone on the bench in the middle of the park, that he’d gotten into his car and driven around for hours.

He knew that he’d ended up in her driveway a few hours later, when the sky had drained of light and his gut was empty and his hands had finally stopped shaking. He had just wanted to talk to her. But it was there in her driveway that he’d realized, that the weight of her words had finally hit him. “I’m scared,” she had said, but what she had meant to add was “of you.” _I’m scared of you_. Of what he was capable of, of everything he’d sworn never to do and the person he promised himself he would never become.

He’d driven home that night without speaking to her: he hadn’t spoken to her since, actually. It poured that night, rained the heaviest he could ever remember it raining, like the sky was begging him to feel something other than empty, other than angry. It didn’t make him feel better. Neither did the hole that he’d put in the wall in his bedroom at his old house. It was there for three weeks, a constant reminder of the bruise on his knuckles and the rip in his heart and the fire in his head, until his dad noticed it and spent an afternoon fixing it.

They hadn’t spoken then, Clay’s dad and his son, but the silence told him everything he needed to know. Dream had spent his life promising to be different, had seen the distant, painful look in his mom’s eyes and had sworn that he’d never see it again. It was the same look that Alexa had given him as she sat next to him on a spring day that was far too hot for the time of year and told him she was scared.

 _I’m scared too_ , he had wanted to say, standing in the rain that night, trying to find the moon behind the heavy clouds and wishing his head and his heart would stop pounding. _I’m scared because I don’t know if I can stop it, and I don’t know if I have the strength to do it alone_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream's mom calls; he reflects on a conversation with George and Sapnap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sleepy and this is a bit of a sad chapter, but rest assured that I have been thinking about ideas for this story pretty much non-stop and some really interesting stuff is coming :)
> 
> this fic is centered on "Can I Call You Tonight?" by Dayglow, but I have a running playlist of songs to listen to as I write, and this chapter was heavily inspired by Jon Bellion's "Stupid Deep" if you wanna give it a listen!
> 
> THANK YOU FOR ALL THE LOVE!! it is seriously insane, I really appreciate you all!

Dream woke up in the middle of the next day, his face pressed to the cold wood floor by the window and his phone nearby, buzzing incessantly. He moved to sit up and found his neck tense and damp with sweat. His heart was racing and the sun was directly in his eyes; he tried to remember the dream he’d just had, but all he could get was a brief memory of a flash of lightning and the sound of something crashing or falling over.

He yawned and reached for his phone, finding the movement released some of the tension in his shoulder blades. His mother’s contact flashed on the screen.

“Hi,” he said once he picked up, his voice groggy and disoriented.

“Clay, did you just wake up?”

He yawned again before answering. “Yeah, I fell asleep on the couch,” he told her, impressed at the lie and how easily he told it. In truth, it was the second time this week that he’d not been able to make it to his bedroom before falling asleep. The floor was not the best substitute, and the pain in his neck was a prime example of that, but these days he was lucky to get any sleep at all.

Most nights he spent in front of his computer, coding or editing or otherwise spiraling down a random series of Wikipedia pages. The internet — his corner of it, anyway — was most active in the middle of the day, and he liked to spend some time browsing fan art or tweeting his friends. 

A few times a week he’d join someone’s stream or start one of his own (a rare occurrence, because he preferred the ease of editing recordings after the fact as opposed to the pressure of speaking live to tens of thousands of people), but for the most part his days were quiet. He liked it that way, though. Private.

This was not to say that he did not talk to his friends frequently. In fact, it was pretty much the exact opposite. Their chats were a constant stream: ideas for videos, questions and memes or a quick congratulations for a random milestone. Dream talked to George and Sapnap the most, and his favorite nights were the ones they spent sleepily talking over Discord calls.

If one of the boys wanted to talk, all they had to do was start a call, and there was a good chance that at least one of the others would join in. They’d spent countless nights like this, swapping stories and asking each other questions. “What’s your favorite color? Who was your first kiss? What country would you love to live in?” They started off simple and got deeper as the night darkened and their vision blurred with sleep a little more.

[Begin Flashback]

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t gotten so famous so quickly?” George had asked a few days ago. It was somewhere near three in the morning — eight for George, but the boys followed their own schedules and rarely paid attention to their time zones — and Dream answered without hesitation.

“No. I think I had it coming.” George and Sapnap had laughed, a little out of surprise but mostly out of incredulity at his confidence.

“Wow, Dream,” his first best friend scoffed, “your skills in subtlety are unmatched.”

Dream smiled at his screen. “That’s not how I meant it. I just…” he paused thoughtfully this time, “It sounds cheesy to say it out loud. I just feel like there are very little things that I can’t do if I put my mind to it. I don’t mean it in a cocky way, I’m a really optimistic person, I guess. I’ve failed a lot of projects in the past, but all I really needed was for one of them to explode like this one did.”

He didn’t find it difficult to open up about this kind of stuff, his thought processes unfolding naturally. “I don’t think I, like, planned to get as big as I did. I mean, maybe I hoped so,” he added on second thought with a laugh. “I don’t know. I’m glad I did, though. It’s not like it’s something I plan to do forever, but I’m really glad it happened.”

“What would you guys do if you had all the time and money in the world?” Sapnap asked then. Mild diversions like these were common when it was this late, all of the boys just speaking their thoughts without much censoring.

“I don’t know,” George had answered. “I don’t think I’d do anything crazy different. I’d probably just keep the YouTube and Twitch thing going.”

“I’d be a writer, or a director or something,” Dream admitted. “It’s part of my plan, anyway.” George hummed in understanding.

His eyes drifted naturally towards the stack of books in the corner of his room. The Percy Jackson series was a lot of it, naturally, but there were a couple others mixed in; middle school classics like _Lord of the Flies_ and _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , but more complicated stuff, too, like Shakespeare, an obscure dystopian novel that he hadn’t gotten around to reading yet, and a traveler’s copy of the Bible. He wasn’t really religious, but he liked to learn about how other people saw the world.

“Really? I didn’t know that,” Sapnap said, pulling him back to the conversation.

“I get it,” George said before Dream got the chance. He and George were opposites in some ways, but they always seemed to understand each other in the ways that mattered. George was good at listening but not as good at expressing his feelings; a man of few words, if you will. Dream was rather easily distracted, even during conversations, but he was thoughtful and good at being sympathetic.

Sapnap had left later in the call — he had some event the next morning. Then it was Dream, sprawled out on his bed playing with a stress ball the shape of the Earth, and George’s relative quiet on the other end of the line.

“Are you still here?” Dream had asked into the call.

“Yeah,” George answered softly. He’d never say it, but Dream’s favorite “version” of George was his latenight self, sleepy and uninhibited: on stream, George put a lot of focus into being an interesting person to watch, and thus everything that he did was very… controlled? Or just carefully managed.

A lot of it came from the fact that his facecam was on, of course. Dream didn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff. No one could tell if his mouth dropped open at a particularly clever line of dialogue or if his eyes lingered too long on George’s face in the corner of the screen. God, George was so attractive that it was almost unfair. He was all clean, sharp edges and mischievous smiles, with facial quirks that drove Dream crazy, like when he raised an eyebrow or tilted his head to the side thoughtfully.

It had always been clear to Dream that he was physically attracted to George. It wasn’t something that he was ashamed or embarrassed of: physical attraction was simple, and it didn’t take a genius to recognize that George was handsome, in a conventional sense but also on a deeper, more emotional level. He was intelligent, he had a really nice smile, and his voice adopted a level of confidence when he talked about math or coding that made Dream’s heart beat in slow motion. It’s just that the physical attraction had never connected to any other, more complicated feelings... before.

“What’re you thinking about?” George murmured into the dark.

“You,” Dream answered between a yawn. George laughed lightly, amused.

“Hm? What about me?” There it was, once again; that underlying power in his tone. It wasn’t outright flirtatious, but it wasn’t _not_ flirtatious, either. George was more confident off camera, but both of the boys were secure enough in themselves and their friendship that they teased each other like this for fun more than anything else. That’s how Dream saw it, anyway.

Admitting that it was anything else or that it actually meant anything would be far too dangerous.

Dream answered his question with one of his own. “Does it ever make you nervous that you’ve got a facecam on?” It was quiet for a moment.

“Maybe a little. It’s just weird since I can’t, like, see all the faces of the people watching me. It doesn’t unnerve me in general, though. It’s like — this sounds dumb.”

“I want to hear it,” Dream hummed. It would never even cross his mind to judge George for anything he said. They — Dream, George and Sapnap — had a mutual agreement to respect one another fully, and they didn’t have difficulty understanding one another’s perspectives.

When George continued, his voice had dropped another octave until it was barely above a whisper. “I think that, for a really long time, I was really self-conscious about how I looked. But then I got a little more confidence, and I started making videos and putting my actual face out there, and _now_ , people, like—”

“Make entire accounts to fawn over how hot you are,” Dream finished for him. George half-coughed, half-laughed in surprise. When he spoke again, his voice was a little subdued, as though he was flustered.

“I mean, I was going to say it a bit differently, but yeah. They’ve been pretty nice about the whole thing.” Dream made a noise of agreement and then they were quiet for a minute. Dream tossed the stress ball in his hands a few feet into the air and tried to see how straight of a descent he could get it to make.

“What’re _you_ thinking about?” He asked George after a bit.

“Do you think you’re hot?” Dream’s face twisted into a bewildered smile and he let out a wheeze of laughter, his voice cutting through the warm room.

“Do I what?”

“You called me hot, technically,” George said indignantly, “and I told you that I feel pretty confident in how I look. So I want to know if you think you’re attractive.”

“Do _you_ think I’m attractive?” Dream asked, unable to hide the hint of smugness in his voice.

“Why do you always answer my questions with questions?” George whined in frustration.

“Humor me.”

“Duh,” George complied. Dream smiled to himself.

“You haven’t even seen my face,” he teased.

“I’m literally just answering your question.” Dream’s smile widened at the way that George pronounced “literally,” his British accent sharpening with his exasperation.

“How come you think I’m attractive?” he pushed.

“I dunno. I mean, I saw the merch pictures you did. You’re tall, plus you have nice hands.” Here, Dream wheezed again, trying at the same time to ignore the twist in his stomach at George’s admission. He stopped throwing the ball into the air, instead holding it to his side.

“I have what? Nice _hands_?”

“What? That’s not a weird thing to say!” George said defensively.

“No, that’s just — I just think that’s funny. Thank you. I’m glad you… like my hands.” He held one of them up, close to his face so that he could make out his fingers in the dark. He’d thought about his body a lot — his height, his hair, even the way he walked — but he had never put a ton of thought into his hands and how they looked.

He observed it carefully now, his eyes passing over each of his knuckles and the veins that ran along his thin fingers. He turned his hand to inspect his palm, which was flat and soft: there was a small scar on his thumb from a soccer game when he was little.

He’d never thought much at all about his hands, but it intrigued him to know that George, from thousands of miles away, had spent actual, real time thinking about them. It was weird but kind of thrilling to know that he was on George’s mind even when they weren’t talking. They were friends, and friends thought about friends, but did friends think about friends’ hands?

“You’re welcome,” George answered curtly. He got short like this when he was embarrassed.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel weird, I just didn’t think it was a question you’d actually answer.”

“You asked me a question; why would I not answer it?”

“I mean, I guess I just didn’t think that it was something that you thought about at all,” Dream admitted.

“You still haven’t let me see your face,” George pointed out. “Obviously I’m curious.”

A warm feeling filled Dream’s stomach; he liked the way that George tried to cover his curiosity with sarcasm, and he also liked the sense of power that he got from having something that George wanted. The conversation had switched then to focus on a plan for a YouTube video, but Dream had come back to the memory several times in the last few days.

George’s answer had been simple, confident: “Duh.” _Of course_. George was so sure of so many things, even when it came to Dream and the things about himself that he couldn’t understand. Some people were lucky and they got to see the world beyond themselves as solid: Dream hadn't trusted anyone other than himself for a long time. In this sense, he was partly amazed and partly irritated by George’s ability to analyze him and say things that affected him so much.

Behind closed doors, Dream’s main concern was to stay functional in order to continue his career. He fed Patches, and he showered, and he tried to eat on a regular basis.

Twitch and YouTube kept him positive and encouraged him to keep waking up every morning, but the further he went and the bigger he got, the more it seemed his loneliness was amplified. There was a gaping hole in his heart that'd been there long before Alexa, maybe even before his father, and it ate away at his ability to exist in the everyday world. But he couldn’t stand to admit that to himself either, that he might actually need someone else. He wanted to stay alone, because it was safest that way.

[End Flashback]

“Clay?” his mother was asking on the other side of the phone.

“Hi, yeah, I’m sorry. I was just thinking,” Dream answered her hurriedly, cringing as he did so. He hated to do or say anything out of the ordinary to her, wanting at all costs to project a perfectly stable facade.

“What about?” Dream observed Patches from his spot on the floor as she wandered the living room.

“Just work stuff. You know me.” Lie number one. She recognized a shift in his tone.

“Honey, are you getting enough sleep?”

Dream mumbled a “No,” rubbing at his eyes. When his mother spoke again, her voice was more strained. “Are you taking your meds?”

“Yeah,” he answered immediately; a second lie. “I’m just really busy right now, Mom, I’m sorry. Don’t worry about me, I’m doing alright. How’s everything on your end?” He was relieved when she took the bait, and he willingly checked out as she started to discuss his grandparents and his sister and the like. She said something about being glad that his power was back on and he “hmm”d half-heartedly. He hadn’t even noticed.

He had a pounding headache and a heaviness in his eyes, and all he could think about was the video that he wanted to finish editing and put up by the end of the day, but even getting off of the floor seemed like a big task right now. He let his mom go on for another ten or so minutes, adding in an infrequent response, before citing his busy work schedule again and promising to call her soon.

He loved his mom — a lot more than most of the people on the planet — but right now he was desperate to get back to being alone. After he hung up, he dropped his head against the wall and shut his eyes, taking in a deep inhale before he lifted himself up to find and feed Patches. When his phone buzzed with a text from George, he didn’t even look at it.

There was a new, dull weight settling in Dream’s body, focused on his stomach and his chest. It felt like old ghosts moving around, like doors opening and closing in a ghost town, like old wounds falling open, like dams exploding and the water hitting him at full force. It felt like his father’s words and it stung like the rocks under his feet the day that he’d lost everything.

Some feelings fade away, and others remain, like the fear in the way that he stepped and the way that he flinched at loud noises and the acidity dripping down his throat when George’s whispers gave him butterflies.

Old memories came back to infect the present; lips brushed against a smooth neck and legs overlapping, but now it was George’s brown hair under his hands and George’s soft sounds in his ear, and Dream couldn’t manage to squash it as he went through the rest of his day. How pretty George would be on Dream’s sheets; how Dream might finally find some rest with his arm wrapped around George’s waist.

It was a dangerous feeling, one that he craved intensely and one that he knew was forbidden for him. He infected everything he touched, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d hurt George like he’d hurt Alexa. Like he’d hurt his mother. Like he’d hurt himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little too cryptic, mayhaps ?¿ I want to release his backstory in slow bits, but let me know if it comes off as too, like, ~forcibly mysterious~
> 
> I'm totally open to feedback — thank you!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caught up in a depressed haze, Dream worries his friends; he receives a call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ** TW/CW for descriptions of depressive feelings and mentions of trauma and abuse
> 
> for those of you brave enough to soldier on… godspeed. also, I listened to “Brainstorm” by Alexander 23 sooo many times while writing this. give it a listen if that tickles your fancy ?¿

When things started to get bad for Dream, they tended to get bad all at once. Sometimes, he got so caught up in his head that it took changes in the outside world to alert him that something had gone wrong.

In this case, he first noticed that something was off when his milk went bad. He went to open the fridge one morning — two, maybe three days after his mother’s call — to stare disinterestedly at its contents just like the previous two mornings, when the rancid smell suddenly attacked his senses.

He took it outside to the dumpster rather than allow it to continue to spoil from inside his apartment, and he found himself surprised by the way that the rays of sunlight felt on his skin. His eyebrows furrowed as he looked down the street and observed the remaining puddles on the sidewalk, small now and mostly dried up; when was the last time he’d been outside? He genuinely couldn’t remember.

The last few days had passed in a bit of a blur: it’d begun when Dream had woken up on the floor that other morning, and then he’d blinked and he was seated at his desk, almost done editing his video, and it was dark outside and the clock read 4am.

He was sleeping poorly, if at all, his body alternating between too warm and too cold, his mind a constant whirlwind of fractured memories. He’d spent all of last night trying to scavenge for a single good memory of his father from his childhood, and he’d come up empty-handed. Every time he tried to recall his father’s face, it was twisted into a demented, angry scowl; sometimes his lips were parted and a drop or two of blood spilled out from them.

Eyes open or closed, Dream couldn’t erase the image from his brain, and it kept him on edge constantly.

He tried to play video games to pass the time, but his head throbbed nonstop and it was only worsened by the screen. He was off his meds because taking them on an empty stomach made him violently ill, and he wasn’t ever able to find something that interested him in the fridge. He just wasn’t hungry. He’d had half a bowl of ramen this morning, and yesterday he’d had cereal at noon (this was before the milk had spoiled, of course), but every bite was forced; mechanical. 

Most of the past few days he had spent looking out of the window, pacing his bedroom or seated on the cool tiles of his bathroom floor. Time seemed to escape him during these episodes.

He knew by the third day that he was sick again, because Patches came in that morning to wake him up to be fed and he genuinely did not know if he’d slept a wink since he’d last fed her, at least eight hours ago. Acknowledging that he was sick did not do much for his condition except make him angry at himself.

George and Sapnap took a while to catch on and even longer to reach out. They knew Dream’s schedule, and they also knew about the video he was planning on releasing the coming Saturday; it wasn’t completely uncommon for him to interact less with them when he was working around a deadline. Except that today was the second day in a row without a single communication from his side, and this concerned Sapnap, who — unbeknownst to his best friend — reached out to Dream’s mom. 

She related to him her experience with Dream over the phone: yes, he sounded tired, but he said he was still taking his medication, and he’d mentioned the YouTube video that Sapnap inquired about, so there wasn’t much of a lead there.

Sapnap had been friends with Dream for a long time; Dream had told him a lot about his past (not everything, but enough), and Sapnap was familiar with quiet spots on Dream’s part. Rest assured, he’d reached out before: tried to get him to open up, offered to drive there to help him, had sat in on hours-long calls of dead silence just to let Dream know that he was there in case his friend wanted to talk.

Ultimately, the truth was that he had never managed to crack him, and he knew no more about Dream despite all his efforts. Sapnap figured that if Dream thought he could help in any way, he’d reach out, and otherwise he wanted quiet time. So here, he concluded that Dream was recharging and working on his video. That’s what he instructed the fanbase, anyway.

George was less convinced. Dream had already missed out on two days of good morning texts, and he hadn’t been on Discord in days. They’d lost their Snapchat streak (which wasn’t a huge deal, as it had consisted of only ten days of sending one another pictures of their meals and little else), and Dream hadn’t made a single comment about it. George’s snaps remained on delivered. It was as irritating as it was concerning.

Sapnap gave George a bit of a half-assed explanation; he’d been friends with Dream for nearly half a decade now, he said, and sometimes he went into ultra-focused mode and lost track of time, but he’d be back of his own accord soon. He and George made up for the content and covered for Dream, but their British friend eventually cracked.

Over the course of their friendship, there had been very few instances in which George had directly called Dream’s cellphone. He’d called on Monday after the storm had taken out Dream and Sapnap’s power, and another time before that; immediately after he’d gotten Dream’s number, just to confirm that it was him. The majority of their communication took place through Discord or iMessage because that was simply more fitting for their circumstances.

Dream had just made it into his apartment after ditching the spoiled milk and was about to go pick up where he’d left (staring blankly at the depleted contents of his refrigerator) when he heard his phone buzzing from the coffee table. He blinked at it a few times before it registered that he was receiving a phone call, and then he all but bounded into the living room to grab it.

His lips drew into a tight line as he looked at George’s contact on the screen. He didn’t have the energy to talk to George right now, honestly. He didn’t really want to talk to anyone.

Of course, George had been on his mind these past two-ish days. When Dream wasn’t trying to sleep or warding off thoughts of his father or beating himself up for his lack of productivity, he was thinking of George.

In Dream’s mind, the section of his memory dedicated to George was gilded, superimposed with a baby blue color and accented with one of his trademark open-mouthed laughs. It felt safe there.

But each passing thought of George was either preceded or followed by guilt and frustration, as Dream paced around his living room and thought about all the things in his life that had gone wrong and all the people he’d done wrong, too. He thought about the way that Alexa had slipped from his fingers and he swore to himself that he wouldn’t poison what he had with George, too. A step in any direction was too risky.

He just wanted _space_ , he thought to himself now as he allowed George’s call to ring until the notification of a missed call popped up. He had expected to find his momentary anxiety eased by the return of the silence, but a new guilt was accelerating his heart rate.

Dream’s empty stomach, coupled with this newfound anxiety — as well as, perhaps, a loose butterfly or two — did not create a welcoming environment for what happened next: that is, George calling again.

Dream let out a frustrated groan as he once again held the phone in front of him. He considered letting it ring through again (surely, he could later tell George he was busy, or asleep?) until a brief moment of panic shot through him: what if it was an emergency?

The flash of panic was enough for Dream to forget himself — he slid to accept the call.

George spoke before he got the chance. “Dream?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of a short chapter tonight -- if you consider almost 1400 words to be short -- because the next chapter (which is 85% complete, I promise) is gonna be HEAVY. hope you're ready for backstory time. >:)
> 
> thank you for your support!! it means everything, you guys have no idea how motivating it is :)) I'm really excited to share what I have planned....


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream tells George about his childhood and confesses something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two updates in one day is a pretty big deal so please do not expect it to become the regular, I simply couldn't wait to share this chapter...
> 
> major TW/CW -- description of depressive feelings and abuse/trauma

“Dream?”

“George.” His friend’s name felt heavy as it escaped his mouth: Dream hadn’t spoken much in the last few days, and his voice came out scratchier than he anticipated. It also took a lot out of him — he felt a wave of tiredness hit him the moment that the conversation began.

George’s voice, though, was filled with nervous anxiety. “Dream,” he said again. “Dude, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Dream said flatly, his mind empty and his voice detached. He mustered up as casual of a tone as he could before he asked, “What’s up?”

George’s response boomed through his phone’s speakers so violently that the recipient had to hold the phone a few inches from his ears.

“What’s _up_?” he shouted. “What’s up? What’s up is that you’ve gone completely on ghost mode for, like, three fucking days!” He went on like that, saying things like, “Do you know how concerned Sapnap and I are?” and “You can’t just drop off the map like that!”

Dream’s eyes closed. He didn’t have the energy to be yelled at right now, and the conversation was proving to do the opposite of what he needed (or thought he needed, anyway). He’d spent several — three, he now knew — days in a dissociated fugue, relying on the knowledge of Patches’ dependency on him — and, perhaps, the rare thought of George’s smile — to keep him going, and now the latter motivation was angry with him.

Not just yelling, but he sounded genuinely angry beyond mere frustration or concern. If Dream had had the energy to pay attention, he would’ve noticed the way it pierced his own heart; instead, he was drifting into painful, long-repressed memories.

Dream barely had the emotional or physical stamina for a conversation, let alone a shouting match, so he merely sunk into a stool in his kitchen and prepared to rely on his years-long coping mechanism for being yelled at: detaching.

He fully expected George to go on a long, angry rant, which would possibly conclude with an apology from Dream, and then they would hang up. Frankly, the list of close friends Dream had was small, and he didn’t frequently argue with Sapnap or his sisters, so much of his experience in arguments came from his father. His father’s arguments, though, had often ended in physical abuse; at least George could not inflict this through the phone.

Not that Dream expected George to be full of rage: it was, in fact, quite the opposite. Dream simply _expected_ that George would assume that Dream was capable of some kind of enlivened discussion about his behavior, since he was capable of energetic debates most of the time. Dream was prepared to let George do his side and then go back to his depressed state until he eventually snapped out of it.

That’s how it tended to work in the past; eventually, he’d snap out of it. He could do it on his own.

He did not anticipate that there might be the possibility — here, with George — of understanding. History had proved articulation (and, thus, comprehension) of Dream’s pain… difficult, to say the least.

While Dream had been thinking, though, George had gone quiet. Dream’s eyes opened and his eyebrow creased. “Dream?” A pause. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Dream murmured, his guard dropping for half a moment too long. His voice must have given away his exhaustion, because when George’s returned after a heavy sigh, it was as though all of his anger had melted away.

“Listen, I’m really sorry,” George said genuinely. Dream waited a moment before he answered.

“You’re... what?” he asked, the disbelief creeping into his question.

“That’s not how I wanted to start this call,” George’s gentle British accent assured him. “What I _wanted_ to do was find out if you were okay.” Dream’s eyes darted around his surroundings and his lips parted slightly as he thought.

“Dude,” George said again. “What’s going on?”

His friend, meanwhile, was at a loss for words. “I dunno,” he mumbled. “I just… don’t feel well.”

“You don’t feel well? Like, you’re sick?” George prodded sympathetically, his voice so soft that it nearly brought tears to Dream’s eyes. George’s voice was gentle like the pillow that he had needed for days now; he closed his eyes again and brought a hand to his aching forehead, leaning into it for support.

“Kinda. I guess.”

“Dream, I really need you to give me a little more than that.”

The more George pushed, the more Dream resisted. “I don’t have anything to say.”

“You do,” was George’s simple answer.

“How would you know?” Dream’s voice was still low but his words sharpened with his frustration. “Honestly, George, it’s not your business. I’m just busy.”

George didn’t take the bait. He allowed silence to settle between them; meanwhile, the heavy feeling returned in Dream’s gut. He held back his tears and rubbed at his temple, shifting awkwardly in his seat.

On the other end of the phone, George sat patiently. The sound of his breathing filtered through Dream’s speakers, and Dream relished each small inhale and each quiet exhale. Unconsciously, he leaned in toward the phone, soaking it in. His eyes still closed, he could almost imagine George beside him. The idea was enough to fill him with regret for having snapped.

“Can’t I — Can’t I just say I’m a little tired, and we can move on?” Dream asked finally, his voice almost cracking.

George’s reassuring voice had a sad smile in it. There was no condescension, no superiority, merely gentleness. It washed over Dream; he found his jaw untensing and his shoulders relaxing, if just a little.

“Clay,” George began slowly, his accent smooth over the name. Dream’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m not mad at you, I promise. Can you please tell me what’s wrong, so that I can help you?” he prodded gently, but his voice had an edge of desperation.

Dream grit his teeth and tried to calm his racing heart. His throat fought back as he managed to let out, “George, I don’t think that I want to talk about it.”

“Can you try?” George pushed. “Can you try for me?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Okay,” George answered, “I can help you. What have you been thinking about?”

“My dad.”

“Your dad? He’s —” George’s voice trailed off.

“Yeah. He’s gone.” Dream’s voice came out too flat, and he could hear a new hesitation when George spoke next.

“Oh. Okay. Do you wanna tell me about him?”

His stomach turned; he did. It surprised him more than anything. He'd _never_ wanted to talk about his dad.

Dream’s eyes closed and slow tears rolled down his cheeks, a shuddery breath escaping; to revisit these memories was the most painful thing he’d had to do in years, and he felt it physically in his chest, as though the weight was trying to crush him, a shiver going through his shoulders.

“He was really bad,” Dream said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat but the weakness remained, and he didn’t bother to try to hide the crying this time. “He was really, really bad.” George was quiet on the other side; Dream grabbed his wrist and held it tightly, trying to ground himself, his stomach lurching. He would’ve worried about throwing up if he’d had anything to throw up.

“I’ve never been so scared of anyone in my life. He came into rooms and I just wanted to disappear. I couldn’t even look at him. Fuck, George. It was so bad,” he said between sobs. “He used to — sometimes he’d — he’d go into the kitchen if my mom was in there, and he’d just start shouting, and he’d just grab the nearest thing and throw it at her. Usually it was a glass cup, but one time—“ His breath caught and he couldn’t continue.

At some point, having found he could not sink any further into the bar stool, he slipped off the stool and sat on the kitchen floor, its coolness shocking his hands, warmed by the heat of his tear-streaked face.

“Clay, it’s okay,” George told him, and Dream’s heart broke. It was all he’d ever wanted to hear, and it was George soothing voice saying, “I’m here. It’s okay.”

George continued, his voice strong and deliberate, assuring, “I want you to know that you didn’t deserve that. _Any_ of it. No kid should ever have to endure that.” It pushed some sort of button in Dream, opened the floodgates to feelings he’d never been able to voice.

Dream regained some of his strength and he struggled through his heaving to tell George, “I’m still scared of him. I still — I still expect him around corners. Sometimes, a car I don’t recognize will park outside the apartment building and I’ll think ‘He’s here’. I’m still scared, George.”

He’d never told anyone that before, and the words sounded weird coming out of his mouth; distorted and foreign. Yet they tumbled out before he could even think about it, relief and pain flooding from his eyes and through the phone.

He took a minute to rest there, gasping for breath: he discovered that he had curled into some kind of a ball, his legs pulled tightly up to him. Everything compacted and squeezed and afraid. He used to lay like that when his dad would come home on Saturday nights, before he learned that no amount of squeezing could really make him disappear. His dad found him wherever he hid.

“Do you just… walk around with those memories?” George asked gently. Dream could’ve sworn he’d heard a bit of a shake in his friend’s voice. “All on your own?” Dream’s fist clenched and he thought about Alexa.

“Yeah,” he answered at last, his voice distant. He closed his eyes and found himself forced to look at the memory of Alexa’s eyes and the genuine fear that they held. He’d recognized that look then, knew it as a mirror of his own. Clay was walking around with unimaginable pain, and Alexa thought that she could fix him until she couldn’t pretend anymore. The hope waned until she broke it off.

“That’s where I go,” he said finally, a distinct flatness replacing most of the shakiness of his voice. “When I disappear. That room. That house. His voice, and — and the glass shattering, and my mom crying. And then... the police lights everywhere.” His breathing was labored but his voice was clear.

“He’s dead. And I’m glad that he is. My dad,” he breathed, “deserved to die.”

Even as he heard the admission come out of his own mouth, Dream’s mouth dropped open at his words. He immediately detracted it. “I — I don’t think I meant that.” He released the tension in his hand, which was clenched into a fist, and inspected it carefully, observing the sensations of his physical body in an attempt to ground himself. He was looking for some sort of physical change — some indication that he was a different person now, having spilled his guts and now having admitted something that he didn’t know he believed before. “I really hope that I didn’t mean that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the next chapter will continue the phone call.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George and Dream stay on call as George coaches him out of his depressive slump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, I have two goals for this chapter: to insert more ~feelings~ and to write more succinctly instead of rambling. I hope you enjoy :)

“I really hope that I didn’t mean that,” Dream said, seated on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest. He felt a rush of emotions all at once; anger and total, desolate sadness and immense guilt.

His cheeks were flushed, a mixed result of hot tears and deep mortification. He reached with one hand to touch the cool kitchen tiles and discovered with the movement that he was shaking. George was silent for a long moment, and Dream’s mind raced amidst the haze of his emotions: had he gone too far?

“Dream,” George said finally, his voice firm. His friend waited with bated breath, as scared of George’s reaction to his words as he was of himself and of the unexpected anger that had sharpened his earlier admission.

He was quiet and Dream realized that he was waiting for acknowledgement before he continued. “Yeah, hi, I’m here,” he responded, clearing his throat.

George’s words were deliberate, slow. “You are _not_ your father.” The words knocked the breath out of Dream, who only managed a surprised half cough. “Are you listening to me?” George tried again. “I don’t want you to ever feel embarrassed for saying what you feel, but I also need you to _trust me_ enough to believe me.”

“I—” Dream was still breathless. “Yeah. Okay.” A warm feeling washed over him; relaxed. George’s tone was so genuine that Dream almost accepted his words at face value: _you are not your father_.

It was a dangerous proposition — if Dream did not have to fear becoming his father, then what had all of his hiding been for?

George commanded him, “Repeat it back to me,” but his voice was devoid of malice. Dream lifted his hand off of the floor; found his chin, held it and pressed his thumb into his jaw.

“How can you be so sure?” he asked instead. He struggled to form the words he needed, trying to reach into the tired, sloppy heap of his consciousness for the feelings squeezing at his chest. “I’ve — you’ve never seen me get angry.” Competitiveness and frustration were different from anger: real anger, the kind that sent heat pulsing through your veins, clouded your judgement, landed someone on the floor, left you with bruises.

A moment of a contemplative quiet passed between them. “You’re not an angry person,” was George’s simple answer.

“George, how can you—”

George cut him off. “Because I know you. Better than you know yourself, actually. I don’t need to know everything about what’s going on to know that.”

“Okay. That… that actually makes me feel better,” Dream managed to say, slowly, his voice nasally from the tears he was drying with the palm of his hand. He was being genuine; it felt as though the weight of it all had decreased just a little. Or perhaps he was just getting better at shouldering it. “Um, thanks.”

“Yeah,” was George’s response, flat and maybe a bit satisfied. The silence between them lasted a few long seconds, George on one end of the world and Dream on the other, sitting on the kitchen floor and thinking. He felt a little less far away in this moment; some of the emptiness in his chest was gone now, replaced with the relieving aftereffects of George’s confirmation that, perhaps, he wasn’t totally past saving.

It was the loss of this heavy compression in his chest that opened space in Dream’s brain to recognize truly how decimated his body was from the last few days. He let out a curse word or two when a sharp pain stabbed in his abdomen.

“Dream?” came George’s voice through the phone, twinged with concern and confusion.

“Sorry, I—” Dream paused to laugh at the absurdity of it all. “We just had this really deep moment, and all my stomach can think about is a hot, greasy slice of pizza.” Dream swore he could hear the way that George’s eyebrows furrowed in surprise; he echoed Dream’s laugh, and it was a refreshing noise, one that Dream had definitely been craving (maybe not as much as the pizza, though).

“Right, then, pizza for dinner sounds good. Wish I could be there with you.” It was meant to be lighthearted, but the statement still struck Dream, who responded with a simple, but significant, “Yeah.”

His mind was swirling with a complex mixture of thoughts; Dream avoided talking or even thinking about his father, finding the memories incredibly complex and emotionally charged, but something about George’s tone had opened that corner of his brain. He’d spoken without thinking — which was, objectively, a generally bad habit to get into — but George had accepted his words without judgement. And Dream felt a _lot_ better now than he had in the last few days.

He briefly reflected on his newly independent life and found it lacking in a few key aspects. He hadn’t anticipated the way that the loneliness would curl around him, lurking in his silent living room and the unwashed dishes in his sink from the morning.

Dream and his mom hadn’t had the closest relationship since his father had… passed; when he still lived in her house, he didn’t go running to tell her about his day or anything. Yet, in an apartment with only Patches and himself, he missed her presence, slouched on the decade-old couch in the sunroom or reading a book at the kitchen table. Missed sliding into the seat next to her.

They didn’t often talk, sitting next to one another while Dream did homework or ate his dinner, but there was something comforting in it nonetheless — as though her existence confirmed his own. Like he could stay tethered to the planet so long as someone else was there to exist next to him as well.

There was an accountability to living with other people, as well. He’d found, while living on his own, that he was less hesitant to leave his bed unmade, his desk a jumbled mess, plates on his coffee table and toothpaste on the smooth marble of his sink. It was the reason he’d pulled a few too many all-nighters and watched as his fridge became almost frighteningly sparse. That kind of independence, or freedom, or laziness, however you wanted to call it, was pretty much the principal reason for Dream getting as sick as he tended to get.

Sick. Sick, sick, sick. It was a loose term. Dream didn’t like the other ones, terms that his mother or his therapists had used for it. He’d get dazed and distracted and sad, and his mind would alternate between blankness and being hitched into overdrive. It was a combination of a few different issues — inherited ones, like his ADHD, and ones that he’d acquired defensively, like the way that he spaced out when he got upset — and it combined into a complicated cocktail, but Dream just called it sick.

It’d been easier, when he wasn’t alone, to stick to his schedule. Sleep at this time, eat at these times, default to caring for his basic needs when his brain flooded with terrifying images and memories and impulses. He was so used to putting on a kind of emotional mask around other people that, every now and again, he managed to convince himself, too.

The line was still silent, but in an almost welcoming way; Dream again felt that new and unnerving inclination to explain his thoughts to George. It was as though he couldn’t understand his own thoughts until they’d been put into words.

Dream approached the subject now delicately, but his judgment was still admittedly cloudy. He spoke into the phone, “I’m, um, on some medication and stuff. Mostly for my ADHD, he supplied first, “but a couple others too.”

He stopped for a moment, listening to George’s end for any sort of response. Nothing. “I get off my schedule, and then with the bouts of sadness comes a loss of appetite, and taking my meds on an empty stomach usually just makes me heave them up right after.”

“So… you haven’t?” George pieced together slowly. Dream searched for any condescension in his voice and heard none.

“Nope. That’s part of the reason I haven’t been talking to you guys and stuff. I just… feel really unwell. In, like, a dozen different ways,” Dream admitted.

“I get it, it’s a lot tougher to get back on your schedule once you’ve fallen off.”

Dream hummed in agreement and George replied, “Do you think you could eat something right now, and take your meds? We can stay on the call, if that's alright. Just ‘til I’m sure you’re better.”

Dream released a relieved breath, finding some of his anxiety fade at George’s assurance that he would stay. He’d spent three days feeling impossibly alone, convinced that he wanted it that way, but now that George was here, he felt incredibly vulnerable and maybe a bit desperate to _not_ be alone.

“I don’t have any pizza on hand,” he complained into the phone as a response, even as he lifted himself off of the floor with a definitive push. He steadied himself against the counter and sent a wordless glare in the direction of his fridge, as though it had anything to do with it.

“Isn’t there a pizza place, like, right around the corner from you?” George asked curiously. Dream blinked and let out a surprised laugh. The movement felt good, and he welcomed the smile that found its way to his face.

“How the fuck do you know that?”

George’s blush was almost audible as he sputtered, “You’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty sure. Haven’t you?” Dream couldn’t recall having said it, so he was even more surprised by the idea that George had remembered such a detail. “I think it was on a call with Sapnap, we were—”

Dream released him from his misery with another chuckle. “Dude, it’s okay. I was just caught off guard. Yeah, there’s a Pizza Hut down the road, actually. It’s a five minute walk or something.”

“Amazing,” George answered, grateful for the distraction from his embarrassed rambling, “I think pizza is the perfect remedy.”

Five minutes later, Dream had slid into a presentable outfit (well, presentable in this case meant a hoodie and his only pair of jeans) and a pair of sneakers, which sounded through the stairwell as he made his way from his third-floor apartment to the street level. He’d connected his headphones to the call and was listening to George talk about something that’d happened on his stream yesterday. He was grateful to learn that business had continued pretty much as usual in his absence, a lot of it thanks to Sapnap’s assurances to their audience that Dream was off focusing on Saturday’s video (which, he mused, wasn’t _that_ far off).

“I’m telling you, none of us could keep it together long enough for Karl to do his bit,” George recounted, laughing so hard that even Dream found himself smiling despite himself. “Quackity left and came back with the same skin as Bad, and he put on this voice and kept repeating Bad’s lines, but with a ton of curses thrown in.”

Dream padded along the sidewalk, observing the contrast between the shadowed sky and the harsh street lights. It was somewhere near 8pm and he felt on the verge of starving, even though he knew that that was overdramatic. Still, he laughed along with George, one half grateful for the distraction and the other half genuinely enlivened by George’s ecstatic tone.

“Oh my god, I’ve never heard Bad get so angry,” George was exclaiming as Dream rounded the corner and saw the Pizza Hut sign. “He nearly ended his stream over it — that’s when Q cut it out.” He paused to take a breath.

“I’m almost there,” Dream said after a beat of quiet.

“What’re you gonna get on your pizza?”

“I think I’ll just have it plain. Nothing too crazy.”

Another twenty minutes later, Dream was settling into the bar stool from earlier, the steam from his pizza (he’d ended up getting pepperoni) wafting off the plate with a delicious scent. The walk home had been quieter, with George’s voice softening as he got sleepier. The air had cooled, a gentle breeze ruffling through Dream’s unwashed hair. His steps felt lighter and his mind was thankfully emptier than it’d been in the last few days.

Dream took a bite of the pizza and stifled a satisfied sigh with a small cough. “Are you seriously choking?” George asked on the other end. Dream had put the call on speaker.

“Nope, all good here. This pizza is _really_ fucking good, though.”

There was a smile in George’s voice. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Dream shifted somewhat uncomfortably at the relaxed, unadulterated adoration in George’s voice. “Alright,” he said. At George’s encouragement, Dream drank a glass of water and swallowed a half dozen small pills before feeding Patches and changing into pajamas. It was past 10pm — 3am for George — when he settled into bed, his phone still transmitting George’s quiet yawns and occasional comment.

“This,” Dream admitted sleepily between a yawn as he slid under his covers, which were cool against his skin, “is the best I’ve felt in days.” It was the truth; a heaviness had settled on his limbs, not unlike the one he’d felt in his living room a few days earlier, but this time Dream understood it was simple physical exhaustion. His meds had begun to kick in and his brain swirled with a few different thoughts — mostly regarding Patches’ soft coat of fur beneath his hand and a few last edits he wanted to make on his YouTube video before Saturday — but none of them were upsetting.

George, who Dream knew to be in bed as well, hummed contentedly in response as a peaceful lull filled the air. As Dream’s eyes closed, he heard his own raspy, sleep-filled voice mumble, “Thanks for saving me today, Georgie,” before a much-needed calm settled over his mind and he drifted — unbelievably peacefully — to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, now that we have officially made it through the important plot piece, we will be enjoying funner chapters ahead :)
> 
> thank you for all of the kudos! I discovered the "subscribers" statistic the other day and cried for an hour straight out of pure gratefulness (and shock. lots of shock). just be thankful that you're not one of the unfortunate souls on my private snapchat story ;)
> 
> PS -- if you leave a comment I will literally kiss you
> 
> see you so soon!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again friends :) I got trapped in a chaotic couple of days, but then I saw the kingdom fanart by @voicefulshelf68 on Twitter (yes, the one that George commented “hot” under, thereby sending the internet into a tizzy) and basically ran to my laptop. I recommend looking at the picture, or perhaps even staring at it for several long minutes, as I might have done.
> 
> ** as a side note, I am purposely taking inspiration from real life events between dteam, but I pay very little attention to making the timeline match up. it’s so much more fun that way — so please forgive any confusion there :)

The morning began with a yawn; a huge yawn, the kind that was accompanied by various stretches and cracks. Dream’s eyes didn’t open yet, but his hands moved to rub them anyway, his face flushed and warm under his palms.

He felt alongside his pillow and encountered the smooth coldness of his phone beside him, and the events of the previous night filtered back, natural but somewhat hesitant, too, even in his sleepy state.

It had been vulnerable in a way that sent aftershocks through his body even now, his cheeks a little puffed and his lips dry, but his whole body felt lighter, purged, if even temporarily, of the demons that had haunted him for the last few days. He’d had no dreams that he could recall, which he considered a blessing.

Dream slid out of bed and headed for the kitchen, leaving his phone behind, finding — with mild surprise — that he stomached a breakfast of scrambled eggs and an apple with relative ease.

His morning (which was verging on afternoon now) progressed naturally, the smooth sunshine gradually washing over his room as the warm Florida air filtered in through his cracked-open windows. The sounds of people passing by his windows outside, wrapped in conversations and accompanied by the clinking of leashes or the dull thud of hurried heels, provided a nice ambience as he moved about his day.

He showered first, standing for a while with his eyes closed and his head tilted back, memorizing the sensation of the hot water as it ran through his hair and the smell of shampoo that filled the room like the steam that would coat his mirror afterward.

Dressed in a comfortable pair of shorts and a light, green sweatshirt later, he padded around his apartment and took a while tidying up the place, cleaning off his dishes, packing away the candles he’d pulled out during the power outage and even taking the time to fluff up his pillows and clean up some spilled cat food in his kitchen.

The cleaning was relaxing and cathartic, and it was mid-afternoon by the time he worked his way into his bedroom and made his bed, taking the time to fold the top part of his blanket and prop up his pillows properly. Here, he checked his phone for the first time in a few hours, sitting on the edge of his neat bed as he reviewed a few texts.

“Grace’s birthday is the 23rd, thinking of having family dinner if you want to join us. Can I pick you up Wednesday morning? Let me know,” his mother had texted, ending the message with a heart. Dream didn’t have to check his schedule, which he knew would be free; he sent her a quick, “Sure, sounds good,” and moved to his Discord chat with Sapnap and George.

sapnap, 8:04am: wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!

george, 8:06am: you’re up so early, and for what

sapnap, 8:10am: early bird fucks your mom :P

george, 8:10am: my mum is literally twice your age

george, 8:11am: and believe me, she can do much better than you

sapnap, 8:12am: you sound like ur trying to convince urself rn

George had reacted to the last text with a thumbs down, and the next text was from a few hours later.

george, 12:46pm: Jackbox stream tonight ?¿?

george, 12:59pm: ok, or no one can respond. that works as well

sapnap, 1:31pm: sry, just woke up from a nap. I’m down 4 jackbox

george, 1:40pm: awesome. Dream?

Dream was a bit hesitant to jump back into the world of the internet, but he figured that guest-starring on George’s stream wouldn’t be too much of a commitment, and he was kind of eager to prove to his fans and his friends that he was doing alright. He’d moved to his desk in the meantime, booting up his computer as his eyes creased into a smile at Sapnap and George's conversation.

He typed out a response from his computer without much further deliberation.

Dream, 1:58pm: Sure. What time?

He switched apps on his phone to Twitter as the private Discord chat flooded immediately with texts from both Sapnap and George; the former teasing him for being so quiet the last few days and the latter offering details for the stream.

Dream checked up on his Twitter and found that more than a few thousand people had been tweeting at him during his absence. The sheer number of tweets was a little jarring, but he did his best to update himself on the basics: Karl had been streaming Among Us, and Dream’s namesake SMP was still bustling with buildings and playful bantering.

He put out a tweet to introduce the video he was putting out tomorrow — it was just a goofy mod he’d done with George and Sapnap, but he was proud of how the video had turned out — and then went through his feed, liking a few of his friend’s tweets and laughing at some of the top replies.

Further down his timeline, he came across a flood of themed fanart; there was a new one out, apparently, in which George was a king and Dream was a knight. Dream didn’t _read_ fanfics, but he was blown away constantly by the talent of his fans and he secretly loved to spend time browsing the art, even if he didn’t press like on the tweets themselves. The idea of creative communities spawning from his content made his heart warm with gratitude.

He didn’t share his fanart-browsing hobby with his friends: Dream and George joked about dreamnotfound all the time, but some things were a little too far, naturally, and romantic fanart seemed like it would fall under that category. That’s what he was thinking, anyway, when a particular piece of art stopped him dead in his tracks.

It was based off of the fanfic that everyone was talking about, and if it was anything like this drawing, Dream could see why. His breath caught as his eyes flickered over the image, his thumb immediately moving to pull the image to full-screen in front of him.

Dream’s eyes moved directly to the right to observe George’s character in full detail. His eyes ran over the black crown atop his short, dark hair, ghosting over his neck and focusing on the light blue fabric across his shoulders. George’s shirt had elegant detailing and dark blue sleeves, with gold cuffs wrapped around his wrists.

It appeared as though he was seated, leaning down toward a kneeling Dream, one of his hands grasping the deep green of Dream’s shirt to pull him upwards, toward George’s face. A cold shiver shot down his spine as Dream’s eyes slid carefully over George’s creamy, pale skin and the sharpness of his jawline. The artist had even taken the time to paint a small divet in the space between the bottom of George’s jaw and the start of his neck, as though the older boy — a king, here, of course — had sucked in a small breath. Dream unconsciously mirrored the breath himself.

Dream’s character knelt before George, the fingers of one hand loosely wrapped around a sword at his waist. His cheeks were flushed and freckled, his eyebrows drawn together (in surprise or frustration or something else, he did not know), and his green eyes almost appeared to glow in the warm lighting. Dream felt his face warm up in real life as his eyes were drawn back to George’s hand tugging his shirt and the vivid hazel of his eyes.

It was unbelievably detailed, small specks of dust floating between the two of them as though the moment had been frozen in time. Dream once again inspected the artist’s rendition of George’s smooth, sharp jawline and allowed himself to imagine, for a moment, himself in place of the character.

He cast his eyes on the near collision of the two character’s faces and swore he could feel it; a phantom brush of George’s chapped lips against his, and how it might feel for his nose to skim the sleekness of George’s cheek. He could nearly feel the gravity lift off of him when his mind drifted toward the material bunched up under George’s delicate hand.

 _Delicate_ , a voice in his head whispered. Everything about George was smooth and dainty and unmistakably beautiful. Nevermind that they were perfect complements, George’s almost fluorescent skin against Dream’s freckled tan; long tufts of his own, lighter hair caressing George’s forehead, curling toward the British man’s dark eyebrows. There was a distinct energy in the image that Dream couldn’t place, some kind of mutual vulnerability — or perhaps even _submission_.

The idea was enough to wake Dream out of his hazy state, and he found himself frantically locking the phone with a decisive click. He found with exceeding embarrassment that his face was a vibrant red, a thin layer of nervous sweat forming over his hands. “It’s just a picture,” he said to the empty room, slapping a hand to his forehead when his voice held a pronounced shakiness.

“What’s just a picture?”

Dream nearly fell out of his chair as his eyes snapped up toward his computer. “George!” he near-shouted, his heart racing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh, dream has a little cruuuush ;)
> 
> reminder to check out @voicefulshelf68 on Twitter for the fanart that got me all excited !!
> 
> I'm so excited to share the next chapter with you guys but it will be quite the challenge, as I really wanna focus on writing natural dialogue; but I think it'll be worth it for sure. I appreciate your patience -- see you so soon!

**Author's Note:**

> PS this chapter does not include an explicit reference to “Can I Call You Tonight?” but I still recommend that you give it a listen to get the general vibe of the story! it’s one of my favorite songs ever :)


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